Nitrous oxide, like carbon dioxide, is a long-lived greenhouse gas that accumulates in the atmosphere. Over the past 150 years, increasing atmospheric Nitrous oxide concentrations have contributed to stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change, with the current rate of increase estimated at 2 per cent per decade. Existing national inventories do not provide a full picture of nitrous oxide emissions, owing to their omission of natural sources and limitations in methodology for attributing anthropogenic sources. 

In this study, Hanqin Tian and colleagues

presented a global nitrous oxide inventory that incorporates both natural and anthropogenic sources and accounts for the interaction between nitrogen additions and the biochemical processes that control Nitrous oxide emissions. They used bottom-up (inventory, statistical extrapolation of flux measurements, process-based land and ocean modelling) and top-down (atmospheric inversion) approaches to provide a comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources and sinks resulting from 21 natural and human sectors between 1980 and 2016. Global nitrous oxide emissions were 17.0 (minimum–maximum estimates: 12.2–23.5) teragrams of nitrogen per year (bottom-up) and 16.9 (15.9–17.7) teragrams of nitrogen per year (top-down) between 2007 and 2016. Global human-induced emissions, which are dominated by nitrogen additions to croplands, increased by 30% over the past four decades to 7.3 (4.2–11.4) teragrams of nitrogen per year. This increase was mainly responsible for the growth in the atmospheric burden. 

Their findings point to growing nitrous oxide emissions in emerging economies—particularly Brazil, China and India. Analysis of process-based model estimates reveals an emerging nitrous oxide–climate feedback resulting from interactions between nitrogen additions and climate change. The recent growth in nitrous oxide emissions exceeds some of the highest projected emission scenarios, underscoring the urgency to mitigate nitrous oxide emissions.